James Ledward talks to Gary Smith, recruited by CRI to take forward the LGBT substance misuse project in Brighton & Hove.
In October 2010 CRI, a social care and health charity working with individuals, families and communities across England and Wales that are affected by drugs, alcohol, crime, homelessness, domestic abuse and antisocial behaviour, recruited Gary Smith to take forward the LGBT substance misuse project commissioned by the Primary Care Trust (PCT). The remit of the project is to increase the numbers of LGBT people accessing treatment for alcohol and substance misuse. This post provides specialist outreach intervention through joint working with LGBT partners across the city.
Approximately 70% of the clients referred into treatment by the LGBT worker have no prior experience of treatment.
“I wouldn’t have used CRI’s service if there wasn’t a LGBT worker there – Gary never told me what to do, he just supported me in the right way” service user
Community outreach forms the basis of the model used by Gary. This has involved joint working alongside Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), the Sussex Beacon, Lunch Positive, MindOut, Rise and has continued his attendance at the LGBT Safety Forum.
More recently Gary has been working closely with sexual health services to support people who need help and advice around their drug or alcohol use. The work focuses on supporting individuals to access treatment services where necessary as well as advice, information & signposting.
Those individuals that require further structured interventions have presented more complex needs, including: mental health, HIV, poly drug use, experience of sexual abuse and domestic violence. To this end the outreach worker has been developing links with key service providers in order to facilitate a joined up approach to more complex clients.
Gary says: “The project has gone from strength to strength over the last three years. What is interesting is that the service has spread through word of mouth rather than anything else. As people take control of their lives and move on they tell their friends and then they get in touch and we start working together. Sometimes drugs and alcohol are just seen as part of the scene but for the people I work with it takes over their lives until it gets too much and something breaks. I think it gets normalised but actually it can become a real problem as it affects everything from relationships to work and people then put themselves in increasingly risky situations.”
He continues: ”It’s been a really satisfying year supporting some incredibly determined people to get their lives back on track. It’s a real privilege seeing someone through their journey and come out the other side much happier with their lives. It’s remarkable what people can achieve when they put their mind to it”
“The LGBT service has helped me sort my life out, I’ve got so many problems I never would never have believed there was a service for people like me” service user
Case Study: Jason
“When I first met Gary I was in the lowest, darkest place I had been in my life. It was just after a suicide attempt. I was also self-harming and regularly injecting anything between 10 to 15 times daily. In our first meeting, to see where I was, Gary asked me to do a test which had a score from 1 to 20 to see how I felt about my mental health, physical health, and quality of life.
“On the quality of life, I scored a 0 which I truly felt as I had become numb and felt no hope, or any potential left in my life. Gary and the service he provided at CRI gave me a safe and non-judgemental environment to start to tackle and work through the issues in my life that had led me to become lost and self-destructive.
“I was provided with many options of support, from one-to-one, to seeing a counsellor, using the things on offer like, holistic treatments and a lunch for people struggling with HIV to come and support each other together. The main thing that helped me most however was Gary’s attitude and the way in which he conducted his sessions with me providing soft methods of getting me to discuss and see things that I had been unable to face about myself and my life, and allowing me to work through these with him. He helped me steady my own way down my path to recovery. This was crucial and at no time did he tell me what to do or what to think. He allowed me to come to the realisations of the things I needed to face and change by myself, which empowered a long lasting self-confidence so that I would be able to stand on my own when fully recovered.
“I feel the service offered by Gary and the THT is crucial with people trying to recover from substance misuse issues, especially now as there are so many people injecting on the gay scene. I myself have seen this first hand and this is a problem that is only going to increase with tragic circumstances.
“What the service offers is a place for people with these issues to discuss and work their way out of the encompassing and isolating world of substance misuse, with someone who is not a user, but does not judge you. They become your link back to society. Especially if you find yourself down this path, everyone you become associated with is a user so your perspective becomes warped from the normal everyday world of people who are thriving and living a healthy, productive and fulfilling life. Since my journey with Gary he has not only helped me with just the substance misuse itself, but deeper issues about how I perceive myself and my life, and how I can achieve anything I want.
“I had no self-confidence or respect for myself before I started seeing Gary, for all intents and purposes I hated myself and my life intensely and my inability to have the strength to live it the way I wanted. I was physically, mentally and emotionally crippled.
“From the dark place I was in when I started, so much has changed for me in so many positive ways. One of these being that when Gary and I feel the time is right, I myself now have found my own vocation in my life, which is to help people who are in the situation I was in and work in the same area that Gary himself does. I plan to volunteer and train to give back what was given to me.”
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